The Next Step in Poker Marketing?

Posted by Verstehen

May 5, 2009

There’s been quite an uproar on some online sites and forums about the latest promotion from pokerstars. Pokerstars is giving away massive bonuses to ANY UK player who earns a minimal amount of points over the course of May, up to 80,000 points which is most of the way to the exalted Supernova status that small-stakes players like me grind 6 months to achieve (confirmation from a huge 2p2 thread).

I’m quite torn on whether this is a positive step for online poker. I’ve heard at least two compelling arguments for why this makes sense:

First and most obviously: the British market is dominated by Party Poker and the brick-and-mortar gambling venues like Ladbrokes that run poker rooms. Stars does not have as much of a presence in this market as in North America, South America or mainland Europe. Therefore they’ll give away whatever they need to in order to get UK players away from Party. I’m not sure how successful that will be, because giving VPPs is a little more esoteric and hard to understand than giving bonuses (something Pokerstars does very little of compared to other online sites). In this view it’s a positive thing for the poker economy as they attract more gamblers generally and keep the games good.

Second and more interesting: Pokerstars is the preferred site for the high-volume mega-tabler. The software and preferences are obviously set up for 10+ tabling, extensive waitlisting, scripting programs, and HUDs. Which is of course why I play there, and why many multi-tablers at small stakes like 200NL prefer Stars over other sites. What Stars fails to provide in rakeback they more than make up for with Supernova status and the bonuses/perks that come along with it. More of these players means more regulars; more regulars means more games running at every level; more games means more rake generated hourly. If this is the motivation then there is really no trickle-down effect of this promotion, all its doing is attracting the mega-tabling grinders from other sites like FTP and switching them over.

Is the future of online poker marketing lie in targeting specific countries or linguistic groups, to the detriment of the other players? North American players grinding for Supernova are obviously upset because it’s just being given away to people based on where they live. An argument can be made that this is good for everyone on Stars – it brings more players, that the extra FPPs earned will circulate around the poker economy in bonuses and tournament entries – but a lot of people are upset that freebies are being given out arbitrarily. It’s an unusual precedent and I wonder if Pokerstars has gone a little too far in alienating their established base by reaching out to a new one. I’m inclined to trust them since they have built quite the empire in just a few years, but is site-specific marketing really sustainable in the long term?

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